Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book. Mal Peet More Quotes by Mal Peet More Quotes From Mal Peet So? You think people stop talking to you when they are dead? Mal Peet talking people thinking Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cousins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe the past is nicer than the present. It isn't. Or wasn't. Nostalgics want to cuddle the past like a puppy. But the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. I look into its mouth like a sorrowing dentist. Mal Peet cousin kissing believe History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We're not especially interested in what it consists of. We wait, more or less patiently, for it to pause, so that we can get to the liquor store or the laundromat or the burger bar. Mal Peet liquor-stores bars waiting Algebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together. Mal Peet tangled together numbers Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them. Mal Peet three different together The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer Mal Peet soccer book children Benches and books have things in common beyond the fact that they're generally to do with sitting. Both are forms of public privacy, intimate spaces widely shared. Mal Peet beyond things privacy sitting History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We wait, more or less patiently, for it to pause, so that we can get to the liquor store or the laundromat or the burger bar. Mal Peet road wait traffic history In my seaside town, there is a plethora of benches, each one bearing a little brass plate commemorating a deceased occupant. You sit with ghosts. Mal Peet ghosts town sit you Exposure is about, among other things, the ferocity of the press and the way - in an echo of some of Shakespeare's plays - the modern media creates heroes to destroy them. Mal Peet heroes things media way I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre. Mal Peet great favourite historical fiction Writing is a form of licensed madness. Mal Peet licensed madness form writing I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships. Mal Peet rules doing my-own way If I were to try to describe the way in which I write, the only word I would use without qualification is 'slowly.' Mal Peet without only try way
